Abstract

Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon occurring in mammals and flowering plants that causes genes to adopt a parent-of-origin-specific mode of expression. While the imprinting status of genes is well conserved in mammals, clear estimates for the degree of conservation were lacking in plants. We therefore analyzed the genome-wide imprinting status of Capsella rubella, which shared a common recent ancestor with Arabidopsis thaliana similar to 10 to 14 million years ago. However, only similar to 14% of maternally expressed genes (MEGs) and similar to 29% of paternally expressed genes (PEGs) in C. rubella were commonly imprinted in both species, revealing that genomic imprinting is a rapidly evolving phenomenon in plants. Nevertheless, conserved PEGs exhibited signs of selection, suggesting that a subset of imprinted genes play an important functional role and are therefore maintained in plants. Like in Arabidopsis, PEGs in C. rubella are frequently associated with the presence of transposable elements that preferentially belong to helitron and MuDR families. Our data further reveal that MEGs and PEGs differ in their targeting by 24-nucleotide small RNAs and asymmetric DNA methylation, suggesting different mechanisms establishing DNA methylation at MEGs and PEGs.

Published in

Plant Cell
2016, Volume: 28, number: 8, pages: 1815-1827

SLU Authors

• Hatorangan, Marcelinus Rocky

  • Department of Plant Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Köhler, Claudia

  • Department of Plant Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science
Plant Biotechnology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.16.00304

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/81008